Audio Hardware and More

Whether you need to close a sale, gather end-user feedback, show progress to your customer, or simply explain how your product works, sooner or later, you will need to demo your software product.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to perform hundreds of demos to audiences of various sizes. I’ve also had the chance to attend demos hosted by others. The following represent the top 5 tips I’ve learned over the last decade regarding demos.

Manage Your Audience’s Expectations

Have you ever gone to see a movie everyone raved about and walk out totally disappointed? More often than not, moviegoers feel let down not because the picture was bad, but rather because it was worse than they anticipated. It didn’t meet their expectations.

Similarly, if people show up to a demo thinking they’re about to see a finished product, they expect it to be virtually defect-free, aesthetically pleasing, and user-friendly. They wouldn’t be impressed for example with a Web-based application that contains typos or JavaScript errors if they’re under the impression it’s going live in a week. However, if they know beforehand that you’re presenting a throwaway prototype, this same audience will be much more lenient. And they will gladly provide much-needed feedback to help you with your work in progress.

Managing your audience’s expectation is critical to a successful demo. If you want them to walk away from your presentation pleased, make sure you set the right expectations beforehand. Be honest with them. Don’t try to oversell your demo. Just sell it, and try to over deliver.

One Bad Apple Spoils The Whole Bunch

All it takes to screw up a demo is one person. If someone starts negatively critiquing every single widget in your application or constantly interrupts you simply because he/she likes to hear the sound of his/her own voice, your demo will be a disaster. It is your job to ensure that these bad apples don’t show up to your presentation.

Unless you’re hosting a closed-door demo, it’s very hard to control who will attend it. Omitting someone from your invitation list doesn’t guarantee they won’t hear about your demo through word-of-mouth and simply show up.

Here are a couple of ways to trick bad apples into not attending your demo:

• Create a scheduling conflict for those bad apples. Make sure they are busy, or better yet, out of the office when your demo takes place.
• Book two separate demos. Invite the people whose feedback you truly value to the first demo and the bad apples to the second. More often than not, each group will show up to the demo they’re respectively invited to. When it’s time for the second demo, go ahead and give it your best shot, or if you don’t have time, simply cancel it.

I’m well aware that these two tips sound like an excerpt from Scott Adams’s Dilbert And The Way Of The Weasel, but unless you feel comfortable telling your peers, superiors or customers not to show up to your demo, these two options are pretty much all you’re left with.

Do A Practice Run

I attended a demo last week hosted by the CEO of a local start-up. After meeting with him at a trade show, he managed to convince me that his company had developed a technology that could solve one of my client’s needs. I therefore agreed to give him 30 minutes of my time so he could demonstrate his product’s capabilities.

I didn’t need 30 minutes to realize I didn’t want to do business with him. All I needed was 30 seconds.

This guy couldn’t even log in his own Web-based application! He spent the first 10 minutes of the demo looking for a password.

Always do a practice run on the system that you’re going to use during the actual demo. You might know the application like the palm of your hand, but if someone else has access to your demo system, who knows what shape it’s in. They might have removed services, upgraded components or, as was the case with this CEO, changed the user credentials without informing you.

Unless you don’t mind looking like a fool, always do a practice run on your demo system before presenting to your audience.

Pay Attention To Details

The hundreds of demos I’ve performed over the years have taught me that people pay more attention to how the application looks than what it does. You software might be the solution to world-hunger but if a member of your audience notices a typo in your GUI, he/she will point it out!

Readers are especially distracted by readable content – and that’s a fact. Deal with it by carefully reviewing the text on your interface and in your graphics. If you don’t have the time to review and finalize the text, use Lorem Ipsum.

Lorem Ipsum has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, thereby making it look like readable English yet not distracting your readers. I now develop new prototypes strictly with Lorem Ipsum and add actual text when and only when I have time to write content that I know won’t become a subject of discussion at my next demo. I strongly advise you to do the same.

Point Out The (Obvious) Bugs

Software contains bugs. It’s that simple. Anyone who doesn’t agree with that statement clearly hasn’t worked in the software industry for long. Although we sometimes strive for defect-free products, reality is complex systems always contain defects – even when they’re generally available.

Doing a practice run before your demo will allow you to identify and resolve the showstoppers, and using Lorem Ipsum will deal with the nitty-gritty details that would otherwise distract your audience. But what about the other defects attributed to Murphy’s Law?

In the event that an obvious bug does display itself during your demo, point it out!

In all likelihood, your audience will have already noticed the bug. Any attempt to hide it will give them the impression that you’re not being honest. Consequently, they’ll start to wonder what else you’re trying to cover up.

Point out the bug, explain that you have a solution, confidently state that the fix will be implemented by a specific date, and move on. This sincere behavior will reassure your audience that (a) you’re not trying to sweep one under the rug and (b) the defect will be resolved by the time they deploy your system.

I’m not advocating that you go hunting for bugs during your demo. If you can circumvent them by any means, please do so. But if a defect does surface during your presentation, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist. The only person you’ll be kidding is yourself.

Conclusion

There you have it. Five tips for a great software demo.

1. Manage your audience’s expectations
2. Ensure that bad apples don’t ruin the bunch
3. Do a practice run
4. Pay attention to details and use Lorem Ipsum
5. Point out the obvious bugs

Do these 5 tips represent all I’ve learned over the hundreds of demos I’ve hosted? Absolutely not! The hardest part about writing this article was probably limiting it to 5 tips. I could have easily thrown in 5 more tips such as (a) control the situation, and (b) always have a plan B. But the goal wasn’t to point out all the tips that can help you out. Only the very top five!

Most insurance companies resort to various medium to make themselves known to people seeking car insurance. Most of them have turned toward online, allowing customers to study it and eventually buy insurance online. It is much easier to go by since referring to sites that specialize in automobile insurance needs today, covers most of the questions clouding the minds of people through auto insurance FAQs.

Most people make sure that they get the best deals for auto insurance and this is where the car insurance FAQs readily fall into place. It for good drivers are sure to be among the curious visitors who will check out the general questions usually asked when it comes to FAQs and in most cases, these FAQs help enlighten drivers on what they have to know as far as reporting, claiming and avoiding when it comes to cautious driving today.

Buying Car Insurance Online

The probability of buying car insurance online poses a greater possibility since people from any respect would most likely understand the importance and why auto insurance is needed. You just have to thank the FAQs contained in the websites since they can easily answer questions without waiting.

Ideally, FAQs assist as well in decision-making time when it comes to buying car insurance online. Some people have apprehensions but considering that they are secure sites, purchasing auto insurance online is easy and helpful especially for good drivers who want instant service and product control. Time is something that they would not usually give out, especially when they have to visit local insurance companies in their region.

Looking beyond Auto Insurance FAQs

Some minor questions will still ensue. While the accident claim FAQs have been mapped out, you simply cannot discount the possibility of further questions that customers may want to have clarified. Some of them are helpful as well, and once they are considered recurring issues, it would not be surprising to see them also in the long run as among the car insurance FAQs, listed.

As we can see, the more concerns that are brought out, the better it is for car insurance owners to expect buying car insurance online. Making it automated as possible is what auto insurance FAQs can do and after proper presentation and clearing out to solicit customer confidence, rest assured that purchasing car insurance online will come in naturally while being helpful for people seeking them. This, of course, includes good drivers who can benefit from the add-ons usually aimed at people who often question why they need car insurance when they feel that they are far from harm on the road. But then again, it is too early to tell and it is better to be safe than to gamble overall.

A good and decent company abides by set objectives and fulfills these objectives to promote growth and progress. Measurable company KPI’s should complement these objectives to maintain integrity while in the process of realizing the said objectives. The question of integrity will always be there since there is more than one way to achieve an objective. Unfortunately, some of the ways can be tagged as unethical to common business standards, thus, the issue with integrity. Methods, like how to measure finance, can be intervened. Results can be tampered just to show a solid intra-company economy, despite the fact that the company is suffering losses.

Now, why would a company do that? The answer is simple. A revealed weakened state does not attract investors at all. On the contrary, investors flee at the first sight of heavy loss. Putting it at a more understandable perspective: Would you pour precious water into a leaking container? If you are aware that the container has a leak and you deem your water precious, pouring it in would just mean you are wasting your water, and you are very well aware of the process. It makes sense when placed into this context. Or, does it? Either way, investors will never waste their money on something that could mean a sure loss on their part when it comes to ROI or returns on their investments.

The strength of online banking companies is evident at a distance. Even if you have not been to their webpages or have not read some of their company background, the people they have done business with can pretty much mirror what they really are. Satisfied customers are walking ads for these online banking companies. So, this is one way of measuring their finance strength, through people they have done business with.

Online finance companies, more or less, revolve around these two common objectives: customer acquisition and minimized interactions cost. For sure, both objectives are easy to understand. For customer acquisition, it simply means the accumulation of customers to do business with. As for minimized interactions cost, it means that the company will keep expense at a minimum for every interaction done between them and their customers. Since there is mention of KPIs indirectly affecting a company’s ways in achieving company goals or objectives, it will be wise to determine specifically what these are.

Customer acquisition has a separate set of KPIs; these are account sign-up, addition of new accounts, application downloads (since the company is online), pre-approvals (for new accounts opened), and locating an agent. High marks on these measured KPIs ensure the accomplishment of the customer acquisition objective. The KPIs for the second objective, on the other hand, are as follows: average cost/interaction, self-service visits, response (email, calls, etc.), and web percentage of customer interactions.

Summing up, the two ways on how to measure finance strength of an online banking company are through the people the company has done business with and the strict compliance to the KPIs the company follows to achieve their objectives. Fulfilling these two and observing integrity every step of the way will not need a cover up of losses since a company will never experience loss after it accomplishes its objectives without cheating through them.

The rising cost of fuel is not only affecting consumers at the pumps but it’s also starting to affect the airlines and recently there has been a huge decline in the airline industry. The decline comes mainly from American airlines that had too many employees and planes running during these times of high fuel. Recently there were massive layoffs and also many planes landed for good due to jet fuel increasing over 80% in the past year. Now we thought that we had it bad at the pumps seems to me the airlines are being hit just as bad and there isn’t much anyone can do.

Airlines are being forced to hit all consumers with a fuel surcharge which is completely unheard of, but with costs it’s needed now. If you were planning on going on a trip this summer then you might want to consider driving rather then flying depending on where you want to go. If you want to go overseas then driving isn’t an option but if you’re staying somewhere that is not across a body of water then you can drive there for a lot cheaper.

Many American and Canadian travelers will be traveling over the border in vehicles this summer due to the high airline costs. Most of the popular tourist areas aren’t too far of a drive from each other when dealing with Canada and the US so it’s obvious people will drive if it saves them $500-$1000.

Driving to your destination is also ideal because then you don’t need to deal with the airports at all which can be a hassle in itself. Often you wait for hours in airports before even catching your flight, and then once you’re on it you can’t move or stretch. If you take a car then you’ll be able to stop as you please to stop and stretch and to eat. There aren’t going to be any strangers who sit next to you when driving which is another plus and you’ll also have more legroom driving in your own vehicle.

With past plane attacks that shook the US many people still don’t like flying either so for these people driving would also offer the security and safety that they needed. Lots of people haven’t flown since the tragic attacks on the WTC and instead they drive now. Driving can also be relaxing and peaceful. You need to ensure that when driving though you don’t feel rushed to get to you destination and instead just take your time and enjoy the scenery. Often there will be very nice scenery when driving through Canada and the US.

There are many benefits from driving rather the flying this year and the only negative is that it’s more time consuming to drive. With the savings you’ll be getting from driving though you can enjoy a longer and more fun-packed trip. Typically people are saving roughly $1000 from driving over flying when it’s a family of four so if you plan on traveling this summer think about driving so you can spend more money once on vacation.

Writing a report can be one of the most difficult writing tasks we face, whether it’s for work or at school.

In my various professional incarnations over the years, as bureaucrat, administrator and private consultant, I have been required to write literally (no pun intended) hundreds of reports of just about every description you can imagine. In fact, when I did my MBA in the mid-1990s it was like a total immersion course in report writing; they seemed to be never ending.

So, to help people with their report writing I have put together a few tips that I have picked up over the years.

People often cringe at the thought of writing a “business report”. Granted, these are somewhat more complicated than business letters, but if approached in the right way, writing a business report can be a straightforward and reasonably painless process.

There are a number of different generic types of business reports including: general business report, business plan, business proposal, marketing plan, strategic plan, business analysis, project report, project analysis, project proposal, project review, financial plan, financial analysis, and others.

Although the technical content and terminology will vary from report to report, depending on the subject and industry context, the actual “report writing process” will be essentially the same. Whether it’s a short 10-pager, or a major 100-plus pager, that “process” will involve the same fundamental steps.

The following seven points are what I consider to be the essential steps for writing any business report. Follow these steps carefully and you won’t go wrong.

1. Confirm Exactly What The Client Wants

This is a very important initial step. Whether the client is you, or someone else, be sure that everyone is talking about the same thing in terms of final outcome and expectations. When determining this, always think specifically in terms of the final deliverable (usually the final report). What issues must it address? What direction/guidance is it expected to give? What exactly will it contain? What bottom line are they looking for?

2. Determine What Type Of Report Is Required

This is another very important initial matter to clarify. There are a number of different types of business reports. Although there is usually overlap between the different types, there are also important differences. For example, do they want: a business plan, a business proposal, a strategic plan, a corporate information management plan, a strategic business plan, a marketing plan, a financial plan, or what? Know exactly what type of final report is expected from the outset.

3. Conduct The Initial Research

Once you know exactly what the client (or you) wants, and the specific type of report they are looking for, you are ready to conduct your initial pre-report research. This stage may be as simple as collecting and reading a few background documents supplied by the client, or it could

involve developing questionnaires and conducting detailed interviews with the appropriate people. It will vary with each situation. The Internet of course, can really simplify and shorten the research process, but don’t forget to double and triple check your sources.

4. Write The Table Of Contents First

In my experience, drafting the Table of Contents (TOC), before you start writing the actual report is the single most important key to developing a successful business report. This document can normally be done before, or in parallel with, the first phase of project information gathering. This should be more than just a rough draft TOC. It should be a carefully thought out breakdown of exactly what you imagine the TOC will look like in the final report. Although this takes a certain amount of time and brain power up-front, it really treamlines the rest of the process. What I do is to actually visualize the final report in my mind’s eye and write the contents down. This really works! This TOC then becomes a step-by-step template for the rest of the process.

Sidebar:

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If you are writing the report for an external client, it’s a good idea to present the draft Table of Contents to them at this point in the process and get their approval. This will force them to think it through and confirm what they really want at this point. Once they have agreed to a TOC you will have their “buy-in” for the rest of the process, therefore significantly reducing chances of any major changes or reversals at the final report phase.

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5. Do Any Additional Research

After thinking through the TOC in detail, you will know if any additional research is required. If yes, do this extra information gathering before you sit down and start to actually write the report. That way, once you begin the writing process you will have all of the information needed at hand and you will not have to interrupt the writing process to conduct any further research.

6. Create The Skeleton Document

A trick I always use when working with MS-Word is to create a skeleton document first. That is, before you actually write any of the text, enter the entire Table of Contents that you have already developed into MS-Word (see Point 4), heading by heading, including sub-headings. At this point, the document is essentially a sequential series of headings and sub-headings with blank space between them. Then, have MS-Word generate an automatic Table of Contents that exactly matches your planned TOC. You’re then ready to start filling in the blank spaces after each heading and sub-heading in the body of the document, with text.

7. Write The Report By Filling In The Blanks

That’s right, by filling in the blanks. Once the TOC skeleton framework is in-place as per the previous step, writing the actual report becomes almost like filling in the blanks. Just start at the beginning and work your way sequentially through the headings and sub-headings, one at a time, until you get to the end. Really. At that point, with all of the preparation done, it should be a relatively straightforward process.

If you follow the above steps in the “report writing process” you will be amazed at how quickly your reports will come together. Give it a try - it really works.

Businesses depend upon their networks as the lifeblood of day-to-day operations. Bottlenecks in data communication mean lost time and lost time translates to a loss in revenue. It is essential for companies to stay up to date with the best technologies that keep the network performing at an optimum level.

Information sharing has permeated society at every level, simultaneously straining the backbones on which the global network was built. Understanding the latest innovations is key for any business looking to accelerate past the competition.

The explosive growth of voice and data transmission flowing over the Internet Protocol (IP) has been largely responsible for straining back-haul network bandwidth. Some ISPs are reporting that bandwidth demand on their backbone connections is doubling approximately every 8 to 14 months in response to ever-increasing Internet traffic.

The Internet backbone must further deal with the increasingly complex makeup of the traffic itself. Multiple data protocols must be transmitted, including circuit-based communications such as fax or TDM voice, IP packets or even packet-switching protocols and frame relay.

Faced with these concerns, Internet carriers traditionally were forced to lay additional fiber optic cabling to accommodate additional demand for bandwidth. However, at a minimum starting cost of $70,000 USD per mile, the associated costs are prohibitive in most situations except for the highest-level backbone connections.

Need always leads to innovation. The development of DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) is a key innovation that allows for more bandwidth without installing additional, cost-prohibitive cabling. The concept is easy to understand: Increase the number of wavelengths that can be transmitted on a fiber. Fiber optic cabling uses lasers for transmission through the glass medium.

Previously, these transmissions were carried out at a single frequency. By simultaneously transmitting data at different frequencies or different light colors, the signal is multiplexed. This action effectively increases fiber optic cable capacity by a factor between 16 and 32.

Since the introduction of fiber optic cabling, SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) has been the standard communication protocol in North America. SONET works by taking network signals and multiplexing them into a single wavelength to be transmitted over fiber. Counting on a single light wave to carry all the data drastically limits the capacity of the protocol.

SONET transports TDM data over the optical medium. Further inefficiency is created by current TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) technology. TDM was initially developed by phone companies to maximize the amount of voice data that can be transmitted over a medium.

TDM works by increasing capacity of the backbone link by collecting bits of raw data from multiple sources and multiplexing them at the higher transmission rate. TDM reserves time slots in the process to transmit the multiple sources in round-robin order. However, the proliferation of other data formats not based on circuits such as IP and cell-based transmissions forces TDM to deal with formats for which it was not designed. For example, Ethernet transmissions over SONET result in wasted bandwidth of up to 80% in a 10 Base-T connection.

TDM was never designed to handle anything other than voice data. Where SONET relies on TDM to transmit data for which it was not designed, drastic deficiencies occur.

Here are some key benefits of DWDM technology over SONET:

• Transparency - Operating at the primary layer of network architecture with raw data bits and streams, DWDM is able to support TDM and any other data format such as Ethernet, ATM, Fibre Channel or ESCON.

• Scalability - DWDM utilizes “dark fiber” or bandwidth otherwise wasted by inefficient transmission protocols like SONET for an instant boost.

• Dynamic provisioning - Eliminating time slots for data transmission allows for connections to be provided dynamically at a much higher rate. • Reduced need for regenerators - Transmitting multiple signals over a single fiber decreases the need for additional expensive equipment otherwise needed to re-amplify and de-multiplex signals over multiple fibers.

Four important questions readers should ask themselves:

1. Are you experiencing bottlenecks in your fiber optic network?

2. Does your network continuously transmit multiple data formats?

3. Are you looking for a simple, yet highly effective technology to gain a competitive edge?

4. What is keeping your business from transitioning to DWDM on the back-haul networks across the enterprise? DWDM technology dramatically increases transmission capacity while simplifying scalability concerns at the same time. The primary requirement is installing higher transmission capacity at one end of the fiber optic cabling.

DWDM drastically reduces signal congestion created by amplifiers and regenerators. High-capacity network transmissions around the business can be conducted without some of this equipment when DWDM is implemented.

DWDM is a smart strategy for a highly optimized optical network. Since the sharing of information is the lifeblood of any business, the network must have the highest level of availability, and downtime must be kept to an absolute minimum.

Backups performed in real-time and decentralized processing are essential to keeping mission-critical applications online, as are parallel processing and a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. The common theme among these best practices is the requirement for a network of the highest quality, efficiency and reliability.

Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing is a smart alternative to traditional Time Division Multiplexing. Know what your options are now and consider the benefits as you expand business operations.

The sleek looks and innovative options make cordless phones from BT highly popular among varied people. As a matter of fact, quite a few users from diverse regions of the globe have demonstrated their faith in the company to design and develop high-end gadgets - a fact that is reflected in the increasing sales of BT cordless phones.

Think of a feature that you would want in your cordless phone and the chances are quite high that you would find the same in one BT model or another. The displays in many of these gadgets are quite large - a fact that makes using them quite an experience in itself. The personalised ringtones and caller ID tunes take care of the fun element. Messages can be recorded and played back at leisure. Other key features that can be found in many cordless phones from BT include caller ID identification, integrated SIM card reader, wall mount and 30 call log.

Another important aspect to be taken into account in any cordless phone - BT or otherwise - is the specific range within which it can operate. Cordless phones from BT score quite well in this area as well. The BT Synergy 4500, for instance, is fully functional within a range of 300 m from the base to the handset.

Quite a few of these models come with integrated answering machines that ensure that users are not forced to forego information pertaining to missed calls. An user can operate these answering machines in more ways than one. He can access the same from the handsets or from the base models. Remote access to the answering machines from other phones is another possibility that can be explored.

One could use these gadgets to send and receive text messages. With redial of last numbers, in-built speakerphones and advanced capabilities for easy dialing, many of the BT cordless phones are proving to be a user’s delight. An owner of one such cordless phone could also lock the keypad and protect the gadget from misuse.

The calls are clear and of digital quality. The batteries are quite dependable, in most cases. With pre-specified minutes of recording time and capabilities for hands-free use, the BT cordless phones are catering to the needs of many people in more ways than one.